Forgetful Snow
by Imposter-Sightseeing
Summary: She isn't quite sure who she is anymore.


She was no storyteller, and certainly no historian. She wished she could say why she suddenly knew so much about strange people from long ago, but still the words came spilling so easily off her tongue.

A voice called her to the sea, coaxing her, pulling at her nerves until her mind was shoved away. Something was invading her, seeping into her head until her limbs didn't move to her own tune. Each step she took away from the ship, away from her brother and her new friends made her scream from within her caged mind, but still she plummeted into the interdimensional whirlpool.

Never before had she fallen into something so deep and dark, but something told her it wasn't the first time.

(Come under the waves, come dive again…)

Pushed away, she could only watch as her body and the thing inside it donned a white dress, stood tall at the undersea ruins and challenged her brother with a deck she'd never seen before. The bizarre serpentine creatures her body summoned slithered menacingly across the field, and she hated every rung of their disgusting bodies, from the rope coiled through their skull to their doll-like arms. Her hand shot towards that ugly deck wedged inside her duel disc, ready to tear those cards into nothing but scraps of paper. How dare they stain her deck, _how dare they-_

The moment her fingers graced the film around the cards, her mind was weighed down with a heap of broken images.

_A king of a country, clad in armor, looking so much like her brother-_

_Those filthy snakes serving the mad king and shattering her troops-_

_The waterfall god rising from the sea, stained in blood and with one look at it, she knew what she had to do-_

_How she was frightened-_

_Riding closer, snatched up by the god in its great palm, tossing herself down into the abyss-_

_And she fell…_

Stop it, stop it, stop it!

When she woke up, she could see her body apart from herself. No longer did her eyes glow blue, but even when she touched her hands- warm, but distant, and how strange it was to look at herself outside a mirror.

Ryoga visited her, always sitting by her side without a word. The redness that puffed up his eyes clashed so terribly with the dark circles staining them, and she wished she could do something besides helplessly float by his side. Sometimes, she'd reach for his shoulder, only to have her hand slip right through his flesh.

She was suffering too, locked in the prison of a hospital she thought she had just escaped from. She'd been asleep most of the first time, breathing through tubes and beeping machines. With every twitch of the cardiometer, she froze her rage deep inside her heart, but by the time the bandages fell away from her face, it had all been resolved, and she was told to forget it. Shackled to thin sheets and a lumpy mattress made her rage burn and ice melt.

A man with red clumps in his hair and a jagged scar along his right eye- he didn't have that when they were fighting and everything burst into flame, did he?- came by, and she wanted to scream and destroy him with one slash from Reort Harpia. Make him pay, for even if Ryoga supposedly avenged her, she felt no calmness in her heart.

He didn't gloat like she expected, and silently lay a bouquet of flowers by her bedside. The bright pink lay stark against the muted background, and she felt her anger slip back into ice.

Ryoga still visited her, but his visits became less frequent as the life ebbed away from his eyes. Sometimes, he'd talk to her, even if he couldn't hear her replies, but he didn't say what caused his back to slouch so dramatically.

She had a good guess.

They smile but they don't really understand, he said, I've been so confused,

Rio, I don't understand…

He said, I can't stand to be with them anymore, I want to, but I swear, I can't look at them without thinking…

…Who am I?

She knew it. As much as she pretended that the fragmented images were just hallucinations, they were too compelling to be fake. Being alone was time to think of white dresses and great kingdoms from long ago, from scriptures slowly transcribing themselves in her mind to great monsters battling each other to the death.

…Who am I?

The images still tormented her, but she chomped on her lip and thought them through over again and again, until she could piece together a long forgotten history. A life of a princess called Merag, great advisor to her brother Nasch the king, a priestess that could speak confidently on monster lore, a life from far away, her life-

No! She was Rio, she wasn't Merag, she was really, really Rio, Rio whose body lay hooked up to machines in painful slumber. She was. She _was_.

Above her ghostly form, the big dipper twinkled in the sky.

Her brother had come with more questions, but they had a visitor, a visitor looked at her with sadness and pain when he had first materialized.

Durbe, a Barian, their enemy- the knight, their friend from a country far away that came riding in one day on his white winged horse- their enemy- friend- enemy-

Her head ached.

Another fantasy- no longer fantasy, but memory- world opened before her, and she wanted to claw out her eyes at each passing scene, no, painful reminder that she wasn't herself.

She watched her brother cradle her corpse and the flames of revenge burn their beloved country and her rebirth into a world of garnet pillars that pricked her fingers with a single touch and her bitter enemy chasing her into a trap and sending her falling once again-

How could she do anything but curse this terrible play?

She could feel Rio falling into the whirlpool of her mind

down,

down,

down,

into clarity.

Let Rio fall. Let Rio _die._

She was Merag.

Freeze her tears, let them become a sword.

She was a maiden, and going to war.


End file.
